Demetz's music is like one long skein -- dark, mysterious, sometimes forbiddingly
grim -- and it matches, if only partly successfully, the sequence of visions
which pass before Richard's ever more deluded eyes. Above all, it embraces
the world of childhood : many of the props engineered by designer Bettina
Munzer and her colleague Julia Libiseller are elements of childhood : a
bucket and spade, swimwear, a teddy bear, a watering can. The whole sequence
seems to be a kind of abacus of childhood : though whether it is merely
a Kinderlied (child's song) as Mab characterises it, or rather Kinderleid
('Childhood angst') is a matter for speculation.

On the whole, I found Norbert Mladek's production rather satisfying,
albeit more in retrospect than at the time : the imagery seemed sharp and
well-defined, even if the accumulative effect was not so clear. Some moves
were beautifully set up; others were rather lacklustre, one apparently deliberately
: Adalbert Waller, the distinguished king from Innsbruck's recent production
of the Reimann opera Lear (they stage Reimann's Ghost Sonata
next season) seemed the most wishy washy of the characters, forever moping
in and out like a wispy Charon without much of a defined role (though that
was perhaps precisely his role). By contrast the ubiquitous mother and son,
a strangely ghoulish duo aptly lending the feel of a Picasso blue period
desolate family group, were mesmerising : Mladek seemed to choreograph their
eerie appearances (often out of nowhere) to perfection; Marion and Marcel
Hauser must have been as effectively grisly a pair (their faces like wagging
skulls) as writer Händl Klaus could have hoped for.